A motorist jailed for flipping over his car and seriously injuring his two passengers while more than twice the legal alcohol limit has failed to convince judges his sentence should be cut.

Terry Ward, 24, ignored the desperate pleas of his girlfriend and a teenage passenger who begged him to slow down seconds before he crashed his car in September 2011.

Ward, of Ty-Croes Bryn-Du, Anglesey, was jailed for 21 months after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and to failing to surrender to police at Northampton Crown Court in April.

Yesterday, three senior judges at London’s Appeal Court rejected a sentence challenge by Ward, saying he had effectively “torpedoed” his chances of a shorter jail term by absconding while on bail for more than a year.

Mrs Justice Slade said Ward had been boozing on September 10 2011 and opted to drive his girlfriend and her 15-year-old female relative to a shop at 9.30am the next morning.

Ward failed to heed his passengers’ cries to slow down and crashed the car moments later, the appeal judge added.

Police found the vehicle rolled-over on a grass verge with Ward and his girlfriend unconscious and the teenager suffering from a broken collar bone.

A sample taken from Ward at a hospital seven hours later showed he was still over the legal alcohol limit of 80mg in 100ml of blood.

Police projections estimated that Ward would have had about 206mg of alcohol in 100ml of his blood at the time of the crash.

Ward said in a police interview he did not remember the incident and then failed to surrender to bail. He was not picked up again until January this year.

He was granted bail but failed to attend a hearing at Northampton Crown Court in April.

Ward was arrested again and brought to the court on April 29, where he admitted the charges and was finally sentenced to 21 months for dangerous driving, with no separate penalty for failing to surrender.

On appeal, Ward’s lawyers yesterday argued that the sentencing judge gave insufficient credit for his guilty plea in coming to a “manifestly excessive” jail term.

But Mrs Justice Slade, sitting with Lord Justice Fulford and Mrs Justice Cox, said: “Ward effectively torpedoed the usual procedural timetable with his own actions, in failing to answer to bail and to surrender himself when required to do so.

“Why should he benefit from the recommended reduction to sentence (for a guilty plea) when his own actions have delayed the criminal justice process for over a year?”

He added: “In our judgement, the discount of 12.5% applied by the judge did not result in a manifestly excessive sentence and the appeal is dismissed.”